The first distillation, or stripping run, filters the alcohol from the rest of the fermented mash. The raw alcohol, or “low wine,” is then moved to a second, smaller vat attached to a 20-plate column still.

“So the low wine will actually start heating up and it goes through the 20 plates that we have there and this process will actually select the good alcohol and separate it from the bad,” Kang said.

What comes out of the second run is about 95-96 per cent alcohol, although the first unwanted litres are high in toxins and contaminants such as acetone and methanol. The second part, or heart, of the distilling run is the purified ethanol and is what goes on to be diluted and eventually bottled. The bottom “tails,” also full of unwanted or unpleasant-tasting compounds, are also discarded.

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Kang dilutes his spirits twice, once to 50 per cent alcohol and then filtered over a number of days before being diluted again to 40 per cent, a technique he says that adds smoothness.

The spirits are then hand-bottled onsite and shipped.

From start to finish, the process takes two weeks to complete.

About the author

Alexis Stockford is a journalist and photographer with the Manitoba Co-operator. She previously reported with the Morden Times and was news editor of campus newspaper, The Omega, at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC. She grew up on a mixed farm near Miami, Man.